America’s image is falling behind that of China

Once admired more than feared, the U.S. is now viewed as more interventionist and less trustworthy than its main rival, China, across much of the world, according to the latest Pew Research Center survey.

The findings point to one of the most consequential shifts in global public opinion since Pew began tracking international attitudes more than two decades ago. For the first time, China is viewed more favorably than the U.S. in most of the countries surveyed. The result is less a triumph for Beijing than a sobering verdict on Washington.

At first glance, the result appears counterintuitive. China continues to intimidate its neighbors, encroach on their lands and waters, use economic coercion abroad, incarcerate around one million Muslims in Xinjiang and pursue a systematic campaign to erase Tibetan identity.

Yet China’s expansionism is typically advanced by stealth — and incrementally. For example, China has turned its contrived historical claims to the South China Sea into reality by incrementally redrawing the maritime borders and quietly militarizing this critical corridor, through which one-third of global maritime trade passes. Its stealthy land grabs in the Himalayas in 2020 triggered deadly clashes and a prolonged military standoff with India that has not yet been fully resolved. Beijing seldom advertises its coercion; it prefers to conceal or blur it.

The Trump administration, in contrast, has made American expansionism explicit and unapologetic.

From military interventions in Iran and Venezuela and trade wars to open talk of acquiring Greenland and reclaiming the Panama Canal, President Trump has embraced a language of power politics that previous administrations generally sought to cloak in the rhetoric of international order.

The undisguised, in-your-face coercion has inflicted a heavier reputational cost on the U.S. than China’s stealthy, more gradual........

© The Hill